SEMPO Survey: The Power of In-House

The latest research from SEMPO, “The State of Search Engine Marketing 2008″ is full of good news for those in the search field. Search spending is expected to double over the next five years. This spending will be funded both by new budgets, and by shifts in budget from conventional, off-line marketing tactics (magazines, newspapers, direct mail ) as well as online tactics (email, affiliate marketing, rich media). Even in a troubled economy, over half of the survey respondents planned to increase PPC spending while a third planned to hold budgets at the same level as the prior year.

What I found most interesting in this survey is the comparative spending of in-house departments compared to agencies:

– 78.9% of the money spent on organic search will be spent by in-house departments compared to agencies at 21%.

– 6.8% of the paid placement spend comes from in-house, compared to agencies at 3% (search media gets the biggest piece of the paid pie)

Two thirds of all advertisers plan to handle the majority of their SEM spending in-house. Oddly enough, only about 12% of advertisers said they would consider bringing more of their SEM program in-house as a way of dealing with escalating paid placement costs.